Why You Should Upgrade To WordPress 2.7

Wordpress 2.7 has just been released today. Check out the promotional video below and read why I like it and why I recommend you to upgrade all your blogs today.

I installed WordPress 2.7 on my blogs today and it is a major upgrade with several new options which will make some of the plugins I have been using/recommending redundant.

Here are my highlights after couple of hours of usage:

• Comments. Now you can quickly edit the comments, and you can easily reply to comments via the WordPress interface without ever leaving it. Great improvement!

• Comment setting gives you options to automatically close comments on articles older than a certain number of days. It also lets you enable threaded (nested) comments and break comments into pages. These make couple of plugins I’ve used redundant.

• Plugins. Browse and discover different plugins then download and install them all directly through the WordPress interface. Sweet and easy!

• Sticky post option which lets you make any of your blog posts stick on the top of your blog. Go to “Posts” and in Quick Edit mark “Make this post sticky”.

From what I can see there is no way to optimize the sticky post to have a different background or heading, to make it more of a featured post. Next release maybe?

• A built-in automatic upgrade that will notify you of new WordPress releases, let you download them, install them, and upgrade your blog through the WordPress interface. Makes another favorite plugin of mine redundant.

• New user interface. Easy drag and drop widget customization of the dashboard and of the other parts of the WordPress interface.

I noted that if you have some plugins installed, like All In One Seo for blog post writing, you cannot drag/drop the plugin but only the standard WordPress features. Maybe something for the next release?

• QuickPress which lets you easily create/draft/publish a new blog post from the dashboard.

• “Press this” is a browser app which lets you clip text, pictures or other content from any website, edit it, add to it and publish it to your blog straight from Press This.

All in all a major upgrade that will improve your blog and your productivity. Upgrade to the WordPress 2.7 today. It is free and it is simple. Just download the WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin and follow the process.